DARK AGES AMERICA

This is the Blog for MORRIS BERMAN, the author of "Dark Ages America". It includes current publications and random thoughts about U.S. Foreign Policy, including letters and reactions to publications from others.
A cultural historian and social critic, MORRIS BERMAN is the author of "Wandering God" and "The Twilight of American Culture". Since 2003 he has been a visiting professor in sociology at Catholic University of America in Washington, DC.
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July 03, 2010

This American Life

[This is Will Okun's column on CNN, 2 July 2010. He taught high school for nine years on Chicago's West Side. Italics are mine.]

Chicago's longstanding ban on handguns, which the Supreme Court this week ruled as unconstitutional, was a complete failure.

Two years ago, every student in my first-period English class on the West Side of Chicago claimed to have easy access to a handgun -- even the goody-two-shoes Honors student in the front row. When I doubted her, she looked at me as if I were a fool. "I could get you one from my uncle tonight," she informed me with a quizzical look. "He might ask me why I needed it, might not."

Guns were so abundant that there was only, maybe, one big fight a year among the males in our school building because it was understood that the simplest of physical confrontations too quickly could escalate into deadly shootings. "You have to walk away from a lot," observed one former student of mine who has lost several friends and relatives to gun violence. "For instance, dude deserves to be beat and I know I could beat his ass, but then what? No one is just going to take an ass-beating, they're going to want to do something about it."

And he added, "Then you got to worry about him and his guys jumping on you. Or more than likely, he's going to get a gun to show that he's not a punk. That's how a lot of these shootings happen, it's over nothing."

Violence was so omnipresent that when I returned to school a few days after being shot in the arm with a .22 (I'd rather not discuss), a staggering number of students lifted their shirts to show their bullet wounds. "What you going to do?" they seemed to say with a shrug, as if this were everyday life.

In a city where an average of four people are shot every day, the random shooting death a few years ago of an amazing, beautiful person, Alto Brown, a friend of mine, was reduced to a single line in a three-paragraph newspaper story coldly tallying weekend homicides. "Everything happens for a reason," the pastor said at his funeral. "He's now in a better place."

As gangs and their illegal guns held whole communities hostage, it seemed as if the only people prevented from possessing firearms were citizens like Keith Thomas, who was raised on the West Side and now works as a mentor to at-risk youth for an alternatives schools program in Chicago

"I don't think anybody in their right mind would argue that more guns are a good thing," said Thomas, who has the scar from a bullet wound on his right wrist. "But I think the Supreme Court made the right decision. I think right now, at this point, the ban is not helping to serve any real purpose."

Thomas does not believe that the court's decision will result in significantly more or less violence, but he does hope that the ruling will force political leaders to seek community improvements beyond just strict gun control.

"It's not enough to just say we need more gun control. That's not what's causing all these problems out here, the guns are the result," he explained. "If we want to stop violence, we need to make real changes. That's a lot harder and requires a lot more money than just saying no guns."

In too many low-income communities of Chicago, the schools are in shambles, quality after-school programs are scarce, well-paying jobs are almost nonexistent, and the family structure is in full crisis. It is an easy notion to disregard, but many of these children are struggling daily to thrive in an environment that fosters failure.

"We have to get them early, before they start getting lost," Thomas said of the youth he advises, get them redirected with organizations like his and other successful mentoring interventions like the Youth Advocates Programs. "Once they start believing there's nothing else, that they have nothing to lose, they're the ones most likely to do the shooting."

After a recent weekend in which 10 people were killed and 60 wounded by gunfire, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley continued to argue the necessity of a citywide gun ban. "Look at all the guns that shot people this weekend. Where did they come from? That is the issue."

June 29, 2010

Is There Life After Birth?

[Some time ago I was asked by the Mexican actor, Diego Luna, to write an analysis of his first film as director, Abel, which won an award at the Sundance Festival and was recently released in Mexico. The essay was subsequently published in a book on the film, also entitled Abel. Text as follows:]

It is generally accepted that the author of any creative work is only half conscious of what he or she is doing. Indeed, without this sort of "vagueness," or indeterminacy, multiple interpretations of a novel, poem, or screenplay--which are the norm--would not be possible. And if the author objects, says, "but that's not what I meant," it isn't completely arrogant for the critic to reply, "no--at least not consciously." So let me put aside any false modesty here and say what I think this strange and remarkable film is "really" about.

Although it is not as popular today as it was forty years ago (give or take), there is a mode of treating psychological disturbances known as "family systems therapy," in which the therapist regards the pathology displayed by an individual as symptomatic of a larger problem--usually, a secret--that is woven into the fabric of the person's familial relationships. Within the family, there is an unspoken agreement that this thing, whatever it is, will never be mentioned. What the supposedly disturbed individual--say, a sixteen-year-old boy--is trying to do when he steals a car and gets caught, is bring attention to the family secret; to flush it out. (In psychological jargon this is called "acting out.") Therapy that focuses only on the adolescent and his criminal activity--makes him the "Identified Patient," so to speak--is missing the boat, on this interpretation. In truth, the kid is a healing agent, trying to expose the rot in the system, if only the family would be willing to stop playing an elaborate game of self-deception. In fact, if the son cleans up his act, stops stealing cars, and starts getting good grades in school, what happens? The fifteen-year-old daughter, previously a paragon of virtue, suddenly shows up pregnant. If she has the baby, gives it up for adoption, stops sleeping around, and manages to work out a healthy adolescent life, the father, amazingly enough, starts to drink. If he then goes to Alcoholics Anonymous and quits drinking, the mother becomes schizophrenic and is committed to a mental institution. Or perhaps hangs herself. You get the idea. The one thing the family does not want to do is address the Big Secret, the pathology that lies underneath the pathology. So like Hegel's zeitgeist, the ghost, the energy, keeps moving from person to person, making it look as though each successive "Identified Patient" is the problem, when it is actually the family dynamic that is the real problem.

In many ways, Abel is a quintessentially Mexican film. As a foreigner who has lived in Mexico for four years now, and has been visiting the place for more than thirty, I have been acutely aware of the juxtaposition of socioeconomic poverty and sensual intensity. In keeping with this, the action of the film takes place in a shabby, rundown area of an unnamed city (in fact, Aguascalientes), and this contrasts sharply with the exquisite photography of the film, which gives the movie an incredible texture, at once tactile and visual. But beyond that, the theme seems universal, for the story can very well be analyzed in terms of family systems therapy. In fact, what came to mind for me when I was watching it was a British tale of family dysfunction written around four hundred years ago--King Lear, by William Shakespeare--and a short story written nearly fifty years ago by the Israeli writer A.B. Yehoshua, "Facing the Forests." In all three of these works--the film, the play, the story--the Identified Patient is depressed/autistic (the child in Abel), supposedly mad (the Fool in Lear), or unable to speak (an old Arab who had his tongue cut out). In each case, their particular version of silence is witness to the Big Secret, and represents it metaphorically.

LearInterested in flattery, the king commits a fatal error, believing the false declarations of love given to him by his two eldest daughters, Goneril and Regan, and failing to realize that it is his youngest, Cordelia, who really loves him for who he is. Worse, he disowns her for not flattering him. Meanwhile, the Fool keeps babbling his "nonsense," which is actually insight into what is really going on, if only Lear would listen. Instead, the king eventually goes mad; at that point, the Fool disappears--he is no longer needed. But had Lear come to terms with the Big Secret, confronted the family dynamic, the Fool would not have been needed in the first place, and the insanity never have happened. (Also, there would have been no play!) Unfortunately, as any family systems therapist can tell you, health is the rare exception to the rule, which can be summarized as, "Let the charade continue!"

Facing the ForestsHere, the "family" is Israel/Palestine, and the "therapist" is the author of the story, who is trying to heal his society. Yehoshua's novella is about a graduate student in history who takes a job with the forest service, his assignment being to guard against forest fires. The forest consists of trees planted since 1948 to celebrate the state of Israel, most of them being paid for by American Jews. The family mythology, which is partly true, is one of pioneers in a new land, Holocaust survivors determined to make the Zionist dream a reality. The Big Secret is that in the process of doing that, 700,000 Palestinian Arabs, some deliberately and some as an accidental by-product of war, were forced to flee their homes and their land. In Yehoshua's story (and in reality as well, on more than one occasion), an Arab village was bulldozed to make way for the newly planted forest of pine trees. Flitting between the slender pines, a sort of caretaker and his daughter inhabit the premises, haunt them, one might say, like ghosts. But as I already indicated, the old Arab cannot speak--he was apparently tortured, had his tongue cut out. With a little research, the history student pieces together what happened to the village, and manages to communicate with the old Arab about it through gestures. By this time, however, the Arab has had it, and burns down the forest in revenge. The police arrest him and interrogate him, asking him the same questions over and over again, and the student says to himself: “A foul stench rises from the burnt forest, as though a huge carcass were rotting away all around them. The interrogation gains momentum. A big bore. What did he see, what did he hear, what did he do. It’s insulting, this insistence upon the tangible—as though that were the main point, as though there weren’t some idea involved here.”

But the student remains silent. Neither he nor anybody else is going to say out loud what the main point, the large, intangible idea, is, because to do that would blow the lid on the family mythology. Instead of dealing with its past, and the Big Secret, Israel prefers to symbolically make this old Arab without a voice the Identified Patient. That was in 1963, a mere fifteen years after the War of Independence (or the Catastrophe, if you are talking to an Arab). Nearly fifty years later, and despite a growing literature by a number of very talented revisionist historians, the majority of Israelis (judging from how they have voted in recent elections) still can't seem to fathom the violence and "rebelliousness" of these "wayward" Palestinian "children," who could solve the whole problem of the Middle East if they just "behaved themselves" and stopped acting "irrationally." (I've actually heard Israelis talk in these terms.) Yehoshua was trying to shine some light on the Big Secret, but this is largely taboo in Israeli society, and certainly was in 1963. For the most part, then, the charade continues.

AbelOn to the film. The plot is something like this: Two years ago, Anselmo, the father in this particular family drama, declared he was going to the U.S. to work, and left. His eight-year-old son, Abel, went into a deep depression as a result and had to be hospitalized. Two years later, his doctor believes he is ready to come home, even though he displays the characteristics of an autistic child. So he returns home, and everyone--mother, sister, brother--sort of walks on eggshells around him, as the doctor has indicated that Abel is not to be upset in any way. The problem is that his behavior becomes increasingly erratic, as he seems to think he is the father of the family and to act accordingly. He puts a ring on his mother's finger, and starts sleeping in her bed. He wears his father's clothes. He also "drops" his autism and begins to talk, mostly giving orders to the other members of the family. He signs his sister's report card from school, and checks her homework. Rather creepy, but everyone plays along with it.

Out of the blue, Anselmo comes back home; but before he can re-assert his role as father, Cecilia, Abel's mother, tells the child that this is her cousin. Soon Anselmo is playing along with this farce as well, even though he (rightly) regards the situation as nuts. By chance, the daughter examines the photographs in her father's digital camera, only to discover that he has another wife (or perhaps it is a girlfriend) and a child by her. It turns out he was only in the United States for two months; the rest of the time he was living a completely separate family life some distance away in the town of Saltillo. One night during this time, i.e. the time of Anselmo's return, Abel climbs on top of his mother and pretends he is having sex with her, then pretends to smoke a post-coital cigarette. The next morning he announces to the family that he and Cecilia have had sex, and that she is pregnant. For Anselmo, this is the last straw, and he confronts Abel with the fact that he is his father. Abel spins out of control and deliberately injures himself; in general, all hell breaks loose. Undaunted, Anselmo finds Abel's doctor and signs him back into the hospital in Mexico City. We then see Anselmo in his truck on the road back to Saltillo, abandoning the family once again, and Cecilia visiting Abel in the hospital, where he is emotionally vacant and has returned to his autistic behavior.

What in the world?

If we try to decode this bizarre tale by means of family systems therapy, it seems fairly obvious that the family mythology in this case is that there actually is a family. But the truth, the Big Secret, is that the father has another family, and doesn't really give a damn about this one. He returns momentarily, and claims to be the father of this family, which he is biologically; but the truth is that he has no legitimacy. On some level, Abel knows all this, in the uncanny way that children typically do. And so, in a parody of the family lie, he takes over the function of the father. He is not quite acting; he really seems to believe it. And yet it is a charade, one that has two crucial systemic functions. First, it cancels out the abandonment: if the family now has a father, even if it is Abel himself, then Abel has not been abandoned and in fact feels (and acts) healthy and strong, for his world has been sewn back together. He is alive as the "father," dead as the abandoned son. Second, as the Identified Patient, Abel is unconsciously trying to send a signal to the family that this situation is fucked up beyond belief; in a word, he's trying to repair the mess in some weird sort of way. Yet the family dynamic, as before, is to pretend that nothing is amiss, or more precisely, that it is only Abel that is the problem. The "crazy" behavior of the child is in fact a type of intuitive wisdom, for it is the entire situation that is crazy. Focusing on Abel's apparent insanity, and not willing (or able) to admit that if anyone precipitated this situation it was himself, Anselmo blows the whistle and has Abel sent back to the hospital. And then, asshole that he is, he abandons the boy, and the family, as he did two years before. So this "solution" solves nothing, because the Big Secret, the fact that this family is in no way a family, never gets dealt with. Thus we are back to Square One, with Anselmo having gone AWOL and the kid in the hospital, once again emotionally dead. As in the case of the hypothetical family I described earlier, or the family of King Lear, or the "family" of Israel/Palestine, the temptation to focus on the Identified Patient rather than get to the heart of the matter is too powerful to resist, because getting to the heart of the matter is inevitably terrifying. Not to put too fine a point on it, Abel is nothing less than a work of genius. It is at once a Mexican tragedy, a Shakespearean tragedy, a Middle Eastern tragedy, and a universal tragedy, which can be summarized in the words of the British poet W.H. Auden: "We would rather be ruined than changed." Great stories generally don't have happy endings, what can I tell you.

About Me

Morris Berman is well known as an innovative cultural historian and social critic. He has taught at a number of universities in Europe and North America, and has held visiting endowed chairs at Incarnate Word College (San Antonio), the University of New Mexico, and Weber State University. During 1982-88 he was the Lansdowne Professor in the History of Science at the University of Victoria, British Columbia. Berman won the Governor’s Writers Award for Washington State in 1990, the Rollo May Center Grant for Humanistic Studies in 1992, and the Neil Postman Award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity (from the Media Ecology Association) in 2013. He is the author of a trilogy on the evolution of human consciousness–-The Reenchantment of the World (1981), Coming to Our Senses (1989), and Wandering God: A Study in Nomadic Spirituality (2000)–and in 2000 his Twilight of American Culture was named a “Notable Book” by the New York Times Book Review. Dr. Berman relocated to Mexico in 2006, and during 2008-9 was a Visiting Professor at the Tecnologico de Monterrey, Mexico City.